The Life of Thomas Hardy
some interest to compare this theory of Hardy's, and its application in his poems, with the first article in the creed of our present-day Imagist school, which reads: "To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word." With the latter—and more important—part of this fundamental tenet, Hardy is entirely in sympathy, but is his language that of common speech? In the novels, certainly. Nowhere in his prose, which is usually of a sublime simplicity, can one find such a monstrosity as this notorious and frequently quoted passage perpetrated by Meredith,—the speech of an eighteen-year-old girl: "We have met. It is more than I have merited. We part. In mercy let it be forever. Oh, terrible word! Coined by the passions of our youth, it comes to us for our sole riches when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures, and is the passport given by Abnegation unto Woe that prays to quit this probationary sphere."
But what of Hardy's verse? Let us open the Wessex Poems, or the Collected Poems, and glance at the very first stanza of the very first poem:
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellowlike, and despite divergence
Fused us in friendship.
Certainly this is not the language of common, nor of uncommon, speech. There are those who will perhaps deny that it is language at all. The trouble does not lie in the fact that it is a rather unsuccessful attempt to
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